Cordray Nomination Gets White House Push Before Senate Vote

The Obama administration pressed the
Senate for confirmation of Richard Cordray to head the new
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as Republicans said they
had enough votes to block the nomination.

Republicans had the chance to raise concerns when the law
creating the bureau was being written and “the Senate should
get on” with the task of confirming Cordray, Deputy Treasury
Secretary Neal Wolin said at the White House briefing.

Tomorrow’s vote on President Barack Obama’s nomination of
Cordray is a top priority for the administration. The consumer
bureau “without its full authorities is hamstrung in its
ability to help level the playing field between small banks and
nonbank financial service providers,” the White House said in a
statement today.

Forty-five Republican senators have signed on to a letter
vowing to hold up any nominee until the White House and
Democrats agree to restructure the board and give Congress more
oversight.

“It is inconceivable that in this time of tight budgets
that we would create a new agency that is completely
unaccountable in terms of its budget,” which may be more than
$500 million, Senator Susan Collins of Maine said yesterday.

Collins said Cordray is “clearly a qualified individual”
but it “has everything to do with accountability for how money
is spent in government.”

‘Transparent and Accountable’

Wolin said the bureau will be “transparent and
accountable” and is structured like other agencies overseeing
financial institutions because “we want to make sure that our
bank regulators are free of political influence.”

Democrats control 53 votes in the Senate, where the rules
require 60 votes to move ahead with legislation.

Obama is scheduled to sit for interviews tomorrow with
local television stations in Alaska, Indiana, Iowa, Maine,
Nevada, Tennessee and Utah, states where the administration is
seeking to sway a Republican senator. The White House also
brought attorneys general from Maryland, Mississippi, North
Carolina and Utah to the White House to lobby for Cordray’s
confirmation.

White House press secretary Jay Carney refused to comment
when asked whether Obama would use his recess appointment
authority to put Cordray in place if no Senate vote takes place.

Cordray, a former Ohio attorney general, is currently
serving as enforcement chief at the bureau, which was created in
2010 by the Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul.